Fishing is widely recognized as a generally enjoyable recreational activity. One of the less enjoyable aspects of fishing, however, is the cleaning of fish that are caught. The cleaning of fish generally includes scaling the fish or, in the case of some species such as catfish, skinning the fish, and removing the head, tail and fins of the fish. If the fish is of sufficient size, the fish may be filleted, that is, the edible portion of the fish may be removed from the bones. However, cleaning fish can be difficult due to the fact that fish are generally slippery and difficult to grasp. Removed fish scales and associated material will inevitably be spread onto knifes or other instruments during cleaning, making the instruments difficult to handle, further increasing the difficulty and unpleasantness of the task.
A wide variety of devices are known in the art to facilitate fish cleaning. These devices are known as fish cleaning boards, fish scaling boards, fish filleting kits, etc., and typically contain a clamp permanently affixed to a cutting or cleaning board. Examples of these devices include those described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,725,592, 2,756,457, 3,503,094, and Des. 352,427, the disclosures of which are hereby incorporated by reference herein. However, the use of a clamp fixed to a base still requires an unacceptable amount of handling of the fish. With such apparatuses, the fish is typically secured by the clamp and one side of the fish is cleaned. The fish is then removed from the clamp, turned over, reclamped and the second side cleaned. During unclamping and reclamping of the fish, the fish must be handled, spreading scales and fluids onto the hands.
Another apparatus has attempted to minimize the amount of handling during cleaning by clamping a fish in the middle of a base and providing a means to flip the fish from one side of the board to the other without touching the fish. One such device includes the kit disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,116,279, the disclosure of which is also incorporated by reference herein. However, this kit still includes a clamp permanently affixed to the cleaning surface. Also, the kit only allows the clamping of the tail of the fish. This minimizes the usefulness of the kit, since clamping the head of the fish may be preferred depending on the size of the fish and the cleaning technique used.
Another fish cleaning apparatus is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,117,004, the disclosure of which is also incorporated by reference herein. The apparatus requires the impaling of a fish to be cleaned on a holder rod and securing of the fish on one of a pair of angularly oriented cleaning surfaces by a plurality of spikes protruding from the cleaning surfaces. While the apparatus allows each side of the fish to be cleaned without handling the fish to turn it over during cleaning, it does not permit the securing of either the head or the tail of the fish, limiting its usefulness as mentioned above. The apparatus also requires two separate cleaning surfaces. It also impales the flesh of the fish on the spikes protruding from the surface, potentially causing the flesh of the fish to be damaged, reducing the attractiveness of the cleaned fish.
Therefore there is still a need for a fish cleaning device that minimizes the amount of handling of the fish being cleaned, while permitting either the head or tail of the fish to be secured.